Blessed Kateri

 

So today is a tough day in a tough year.  We are going to have to say goodbye to a very special part of the family, our pet cat Kateri.  She was and will remain a part of our hearts.  Like Nutty, our first pet together, Kateri has been a live action partner through quite a lot of challenges.

So where to begin?  Well, lets start with her name, Kateri, for Kateri Tekakwitha, the fairly recently canonized patron saint of the environment and ecology, the first canonized native person for the continent we call North America.  Our Kateri was born in a litter of kittens in July 2004 to a family of devout Roman Catholics that had befriended Jackie while I was away on my first deployment to Iraq, the Hamachers.  Belen and Paul were wonderful people, with Paul finishing out his service in the Air Force by commanding the AF ROTC detachment at the then named University of Missouri-Rolla (now Missouri S&T).  They had purchased and rented a small farm north of town given their rather large family, making space for a few pets in the barn or garage was normal.

The Hamacher children named the kittens for Catholic saints or blesseds that were commemorated around the date of their arrival.  Kateri (so named because the feast day of the, then, Blessed Kateri was July 14th) along with her long haired tabby colored brothers and sisters needed new homes.   Having returned recently from Iraq after a 14 month tour, Jackie and Nutty were very intent on having another feline partner in the mix.   So after a visit out to their home for breakfast, and after observing the rambunctiousness of the tree climbing longhairs, we were smitten, and Kateri was on her way home with us.

Kateri from the outset, was what I would call a “troublemaker”.   You see our other cat, Chestnut, Nutty as we called her, was the alpha of the two, but Kateri was not about to let that get in the way of her “counting coups” nearly any time Nutty went by.  And I mentioned that amazing tree climbing ability (Christmas or otherwise), well one weekend, not long after we had gotten Kateri, she escaped out the front door on Jackie and decided to run up a nearby tree at the edge of the woods near the duplex we rented in Rolla.  The problem was I was, of course, at Army Reserve drill some 45 minutes away at Fort Leonard Wood, and I didn’t have an extension ladder at the time.  So after rushing back home, renting a ladder in a pinch on a Saturday afternoon, I rescued our small, shivering and scared, Kateri kitten from her own treetop prison.

Kateri, as I said came to us in 2004, and at the end of that year, I defended my thesis and graduated with a MSCE from Rolla; we were then on the move.  This was our first civilian move, I now being in the Army reserve, but my job was taking us from Rolla, MO to northern Virginia, just outside Washington, DC.  The cross country trip was a two day drive affair, and we opted to split up, with myself and Nutty in the advanced party and Jackie and Kateri in the trail party.  I flew out to Saint Louis to help with the second drive east.  Unlike Nutty who was not a great traveler, we soon learned here that Kateri was the one that could always roll with the punches.  We also had it reinforced that if there was the possibly the most uncomfortable position to lay down or otherwise find herself, she did so.  This often included the upper area above the trunk in the Dodge Stratus that Jackie was driving at this time, or flopped over the  center console that made getting a cup into the cup holder a challenge.

For the first year in Virginia, we lived in a nice single story “rambler” (aka ranch) home in a nice wooded neighborhood that had a full size tennis court in the backyard and a really nice wood fireplace sunroom/family room that Kateri and Nutty made their own, but Kateri was especially grateful for the bookcase she was able to crawl into an nestle into, and the backyard full of leaves and branches that would inevitably be stuck to her tail.  She also more than proved her worth with her keen mousing, which Jackie and I greatly appreciated a couple time through the years.  Sadly, we couldn’t buy the house we were renting, so we found a nearby townhouse and a year later figured out a way to get all of our stuff and the two cats into it.  Before we moved our stuff in though, we took the cats over and let them get in their first prowl.  Nutty, being prim and proper, checked out the rooms and so forth, but Kateri, she headed straight for the basement, and figured out how to cover herself in cobwebs.  That also was Kateri, her long hair meant, to her at least, it was purposely for capturing whatever debris it could.  With the hope to be able to display the most disheveled appearance possible.  Inside or outside, she would constantly pick up leaves or cardboard flakes (from some scratching device or another), or some other foreign object.

So, grooming a long haired cat is a task that is not to be taken lightly.  And it was a constant necessity.  Kateri, however, was simply not a fan of the process.  Jackie and I would be able to get in like 3 strokes of a comb or other grooming device before we would incur her wrath.  In the summer, Missouri’s and Virginia’s being warm, would often result in her fur getting matted and creating hot spots that, if not removed, would cause her real pain.  But getting them out, now that was a battle.  We eventually took to doing a summer shave, “lion cut”, to help her wade through.  Invariably, out on the patio, the day we would do this, it was a scene of fur and screeching and scrapes (mainly on Jackie and I) and a cat transformed.  A few times we were able to get a local groomer to take the mantle of this effort, and I think Kateri and us both agreed that was the better way out.

Kateri, as I indicated, was a flopper, almost anywhere and any way, but she also loved to curl up like a ball, and lay on top of Jackie.  At night, especially in winter, if Kateri wasn’t in her “Tuft” cat bed, she was laying out on top of Jackie.  Nutty would like to lay on my chest or next to us, but Kateri had claimed Jackie as her own and best bed spot.  Given her name and this clear preference for Jackie, I’d tease her as being the “Catholic cat” to Nutty as the “Lutheran cat”.  And there was a bit to all this as Kateri with her grooming needs, could certainly pour on the “Catholic guilt.”  The only other place you can always find a cat, and Kateri was no exception, is in an open cardboard box.  So much so that its probably no surprise that her second favorite spot was in one of our paper recycling boxes or what ever new package arrival was left for her to climb into.

Holidays, when we were living in Virginia were nearly always a drive back to the Syracuse/Auburn area in NYS where our families were located.  Most years we would opt to take the cats with us.  When we were in Syracuse, they were more or less confined to the second floor at my parent’s place.  But when we got to Auburn, on account of Jackie’s mom’s small apartment, the cats became guests of the Elster’s, often for almost a week.  Nutty always the less adventuresome, stayed to the main house, but Kateri, nope that wasn’t enough. One time she had to crawl through the the utter bowels of the basement, covering herself in cobwebs and lint and whatever else she could find.  And despite being allergic to cats, Dale Elster, our brother-in-law, became enamored with Kateri and the two were often best buds each year.  Sadly, after Christmas in 2013 (a year we didn’t take the cats with us), we came home to see that Nutty had a respiratory issue which led to us having to put her down in early 2014 (for more, see Tribute to Nutty here:  http://backusec.blogspot.com/2014/01/tribute-to-nutty.html).  So Kateri, who always had Nutty as the leader, was now running solo.  By now she had grown into her “go with the flow” existence and being the alpha cat just wasn’t her bag.  But she did her best to cuddle into laps like Nutty did and be our prime home comforter.  Later that year, a fateful decision made, we were on our way to northern New York State, and Kateri was moving (returning if there is karma involved) to the land of her namesake’s people.

Now Missouri and the DC area have some snow on occasion and sometimes its heavy, but here in the north country of NYS, where there are more cows and deer than people, Canada is a mere hop, skip and jump away, and ice hockey is THE sport, umm, snow, its like here.  And not to subtlety help us in remembering this fact, as we were returning to our mutual alma mater’s at Clarkson University, the first winter back was a return to the bitter snowy cold we experienced back the 1990s (climate change had been inching the thermometers up for some time, to the point that ticks and lime disease, never seen in my youth this far north on account of the historic cold winters, are a serious issue).  Kateri features in as, undeterred, and by now a bit heavier on account of her age and taking full advantage of self feeding, jumped out to experience the winter snows fully.  She was so insistent on going out onto our patio area around the backyard pool, that in the winter I would shovel a “run” for her to be able to get out and about.  She really thought about being a permanent outdoor cat, but the aforementioned ticks and her age, well, it wasn’t going to happen, even when an unexpected guest arrived.

Pepper, a new kitten who joined the family in the summer of 2015, was Kateri’s next challenge.  Kateri, never taking the alpha position, was just not happy having Pepper around and growled in her general direction any chance she could.  After all she had ruled the roost for a year or so and here was the young whipper snapper that was in her space.  With the help of some felaway feline scent treatments, eventually Kateri was able to cope.  Wrestling matches still ensued from time to time, but the whole big house, big yard world gave Kateri enough space to get away as she needed to.  That, and by now, her flopping was often on top of the toad stool just inside the living room window or on the shelf in the bedroom where she could bask in the sun, her favorite pastime.  Life was good, summers by the pool, winter romps in the snow, sleeping on Jackie at night and sun bathing by day.

And that brings us to the last couple years, age had begun to show.  Nutty lived from 2001 to January 2014, 13 great years.  This past July, Kateri went over 16 years old.  As age took her, things began to show.  First, it was a lot of fussiness over the litter box and occasional over sprays or urination on the tray we put in place around the box for such problems.  Bespeaking her joints didn’t quite want to crawl over the ever shallower litter box edge anymore, we started a regimen of antinol pills at dinner.  It was also fussiness about food, and weight loss.  We changed diet, went back to self feeding (to which Pepper has taken advantage and needs to trim up a bit), and other strategies to get her back her mo-jo.  Then the vomiting began, something we attributed to her love of eating grass in the summer as she went out (and of the cat grass we would provide in pots in the winter for her), but it became more chronic and with or without grass eating involved.  And then it wasn’t just urination outside the box, it was #2 as well, to the point that she was using the co-located “puppy pads” much more often than the box, if she used the box at all.  She was old, we thought, things happen.  But after some blood work of late, it was clear she had liver disease and it was getting worse.  With a newborn child, Emily, joining us in early November this year, she really took a more serious dive, so we got a check and we tried another diet change and added some new medications, but ... well it was clear her GI track wasn’t recovering and wasn’t likely to rebound.

As we learned with Nutty, cats tend to hide their conditions for a long time.  There was also the factor of loss of vim and vigor, even for things that she really loved in the past.  It was just hard to see her suffer in the long term.  Her fur wasn’t the same and it was just time to make the ultimate decision.  So, not wanting to put it off until after Christmas (after all losing Nutty when we came back from the holidays was a real bad way to start a year), and it being 2020, the year of less than optimal circumstances, we made arrangements and today, 15 December 2020, was the day.  We’ve been melancholy since this weekend, knowing we were going to call on Monday to set the day, and today has been hard.  Emily is bubbly as ever and a wonderful joy, but it just can’t make up, today at least, for the hole we were going to create in our hearts for our long haired tabby friend.

So the title of this post, takes its cue from Kateri’s namesake, but I can’t seem to get a song out of my head, one I know many have heard and find hope in, as do I.  “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine; O what a foretaste of glory divine; Heir of salvation, purchase of God; Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.”  I know that death is a part of life and that God is in the midst of all pain and joy and love and sadness.  So this is not the final end, her memory is in ours.  Earlier this summer, Jackie created little flip signs so we could keep track of when each of the cats was outside, and for Kateri’s it has a picture of her flopped in an upside down umbrella and the caption “Out adventuring” for when she would be out on her loved patio; now flipped to that side forever on the back door.  There is no doubt she is indeed adventuring somewhere, eating the grass she loves to chew, and enjoying more of the shrimp dinner that I shared with her last night.  We are going to miss you Ka-tear.

Blessed Kateri, feline of ours

O what a companion, of both of our hearts

Cuddle-er of Jackie, fur that’s a mess

Born in Missouri, always in our love

Love, your humans.

The Cause of the High Rate of Price Increase in Higher Education in 9 Charts

I continue to have this dialog about the cost of higher education and the college debt crisis.  It is driving me more or less nuts that I can never find the time to write the full explanation for what is happening and why.  People keep blaming the wrong things on why the cost of college education on the part of the individual student is rising at a faster pace than nearly everything else in the economy.  Here are some of the reasons I have heard that are just bunk:

• Federal government backing college loans is driving up the cost of higher education.

• Higher education really isn’t “non-profit” or “not-for-profit” and is all about raking in money.

• Colleges and Universities have been on a building spree, creating mounting debt that is only causing tuition to rise.

• Athletics is costing more and the average student is paying for these non-academic “luxuries”.

• Too many are going to college that don’t need to, inflating the cost for those that do.

• And many more.

I am not going to spend time debunking each of these, because I want to get out a post on this now.  Suffice it to say, they just are not the reasons for the spiking cost of higher education.  The real reason for why this is happening comes down to a perfect storm of factors that have very little to do with the above, at all!  What it comes down to, in order of effect, is:

1. Plummeting taxpayer/public support for higher education by the several states.

2. Significant increase in labor cost to employers especially for healthcare and daycare in an industry that is highly labor dependent.

3. Increased mandated oversight and administrative tasks requiring increased administrative full time equivalent staff.

4. Increased demand for capacity for student support and auxiliary services as a differentiator among the competition.

So here in a series of graphs and charts I am going to try to spell it out.  Let’s first start with the fact that, yes, the cost of higher education has skyrocketed over the last several decades.  Here is a handy chart from the American Enterprise Institute that lays it out fairly clearly; other than hospital stays, the cost of the price college (to the consumer) has risen starkly.

[i]

But the question is why?  Well let me start with the most clear reason:  its simply not being subsidized like it used to be.  As a case in point, here is a chart from George Mason University, a public institution in the Commonwealth of Virginia.  This chart lays out in clear terms the impact of what the precipitous loss of State support to the institution is doing to the individual student and their expenses.

[ii]

Basically, since 1985, the ratio of state support coverage of the cost of attending Mason to that of what the student paid or other revenue sources[iii] pay has more than flipped (and if you go back to the 1960s, where many a baby boomer will recall covering college by “working their way through”, it is even more stark).  Simply, the taxpayer used to cover most of the cost, and now they are “supporting” the effort at a significantly reduced rate.  Mason is simply an easy example with a clear chart.  The next two charts show how States have pulled out of the college funding business, in some cases nearly completely.

[iv]

[v]

And as recessions hit, or other economic challenges emerge within the world of State financing, it’s getting worse each time.  As shown in this chart, the easy answer for State legislatures to help balance their budgets and/or lower taxes is to cut higher education spending when times are tough.

[vi]

So bottom line is that a huge contribution to the driver of the rise in the cost of college education to the individual student is that government is not helping nearly as much, or even at a reasonable proportion of as much as it did for their parents or their grandparents.  So what we have is that college costs are going to rise faster than inflation, or the general cost of everything else, because what had previously covered it was gone.

This brings us to the next driver, however, and that is the general cost of labor has risen steadily over that last decades driven by several things, but certainly healthcare.  The following a chart created from data available from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics as it relates to employer costs for employing its labor.

You will note from this graph, that the cost of labor has gone up.  If you look carefully, however, you will also note that workers’ wages are NOT increasing, rather it is really driven by the cost of insurance going up.  On the side of the higher education customer (students and their parents), this basically means that there aren’t any increased resources on their part to cover the costs that they are incurring.  So, the many charts available that show how the cost of college is outpacing wages and salaries are on par.  All good there (well not "good" but accurate).  What folks continue to forget, however, is that on the college and university side, this has yet another effect: driving the cost of higher education even higher.

As is illustrated in a report from the California State Legislative Analyst’s Office, the following graphs make clear that largest portion of any college or university is the cost of its employees, somewhere between 66 to 75% of the overall enterprise.

[vii]

Thus, when you put together that the largest portion of the actual cost to run a college or university has risen some 15 to 25% in the last two decades (and over 60% since the 1980s), it becomes clear that the reality is that it just costs a lot to do education, because education is a human resource intensive enterprise.  This is seen in K-12 education as well.  This is especially true when you want to do it well and at a level commensurate with the expectations society has for it (e.g. leading to professional careers or other pursuits near the top of society).  This is not really any different than one of the major causes of the rise in health care costs, in that health care is inherently human resource intensive too (which creates a bit of a price spiral).  To that point the following chart helps you see how salaries have tracked as it relates to higher education as compared with medical professionals as well as lawyers.

[viii]

These are just not industries like construction, finance, industry or others where there are other components like materials, energy, and equipment drive the cost of the enterprise.  This means the cost of it will outpace the cost growth in most of those other industries consistently.  So when you add the precipitous drop in public/taxpayer support higher education to this intensive real cost increase, that exceeds the norm for most any other industry or component in the economy, it is a perfect cost storm to the individual student.  These two factors (loss of support and increased cost of labor) are the largest components of the actual reasons for the increased cost of college for the average individual student.

That said, there are a couple more reasons for the rapid cost increases, that are not at the level of the previous reasons, yet are worth mentioning.  Of the two, one is shown in the following chart, which shows the increase in the full time equivalent senior staff and administrators compared with faculty in the University of California system over time.

[ix]

This is not unusual or particularly helpful in itself, except as it relates a couple points.  Administrators typically cost more than faculty at most ranks, so an increased number means increased marginal cost to the institution.  The further question is, why then are there more administrators?  Good question.  Well the biggest driver of the increase in the number of administrators is the numerous additional regulations and other oversight mechanisms that have been put into place on the industry, creating an administrative burden that someone is paying for (aka the average college student).  But it also ties to the other reason for the uptick in the college price tag: the demand for services that go beyond what we had in yesteryear.

The following chart helps to show this shift.  This chart from the University of California system, again, highlights the breakdown of the spending from two different snapshots in time, just 5 years apart.

[x]

If you look carefully, you will note that, as a percentage, instruction costs have gone down from 26.3% to 24.2% (and facilities costs have gone from 3.3% to 1%).  Then you will see that three specific areas have had varying levels of growth:

• Academic support went from 7% to 8.5%

• Student services went from 3.8% to 3.9%

• Auxiliary enterprises went from 6.3% to 9.1%

Adding those increases together, is a whopping 5% shift, all towards providing more “niceties” if you will.  Some of these are certainly things like an on campus Starbucks or better recreation facilities, but others are much more robust accommodative services, increased and improved tutoring or other academic help, counseling services, increased public safety, and better student life activities for all, which, many times are also mandated.  These final two reasons also contribute to the rise in per capita cost to the customer.  The bottom line is, yes, there are potentially some small nice to haves that are adding to the bottom line.  In many cases however, the cause for them is based on “must do” items that won’t appreciably change the picture unless the said same legislatures that are reducing the support for higher education also give relief from those requirements; there is fairly low likelihood of that.

In conclusion, the biggest driver of the increase in the price tag of college comes back to the rather dramatic decrease of taxpayer/public support coupled with the significant increase in the cost of the human resources required to make the enterprise work.  Fixes for this will inevitably come in the form of public policy shifts that we have to struggle to debate and resolve.  Public policies, however, can also make the problem a lot worse.  One such prime example is a minimum wage hike where colleges and universities employ many low-wage workers, sometimes college students, to accomplish a myriad of activities across campuses.  Adding even more costs to the already intensive human resource enterprise will only add to the high rate of growth.  I am not sure I have a silver bullet, other than to realize that yesteryear’s highly subsidized false price tag of higher education is a false comparison.  To that end, we need to get real and get on making some hard choices going forward.

End Notes:

[i] “Chart of the Day.... or Century?,” American Enterprise Institute - AEI (blog), January 11, 2019, https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/chart-of-the-day-or-century/.

[ii] Davis, J.J. Wagner (2016), Presentation to the Board of Visitors, Finance and Land Use Committee, George Mason University, October, 13 2016

[iii] Basically, on campus enterprises, auxiliaries and so forth as well as fundraising.  In some cases this further increases the cost to the student (e.g. for housing and dining) and in others has driven decisions about things like athletics, public-private partnerships, and so forth with the costs being carried by others.

[iv] Mitchell, Michael, Michael Leachman, and Kathleen Masterson. “Funding Down, Tuition Up: State Cuts to Higher Education Threaten Quality and Affordability at Public Colleges,” August 15, 2016, 28.

[v] Mitchell, Michael, Michael Leachman, and Kathleen Masterson. “Funding Down, Tuition Up: State Cuts to Higher Education Threaten Quality and Affordability at Public Colleges,” August 15, 2016, 28.

[vi] Mitchell, Michael, Michael Leachman, and Kathleen Masterson. “Funding Down, Tuition Up: State Cuts to Higher Education Threaten Quality and Affordability at Public Colleges,” August 15, 2016, 28.

[vii] “The 2020-21 Budget: Analyzing UC and CSU Cost Pressures,” December 17, 2019, 20.

[viii] Archibald, Robert B, and David H Feldman. “Drivers of the Rising Price of a College Education,” August 2018, 20.

[ix] Christensen, Kim. “Is UC Spending Too Little on Teaching, Too Much on Administration?” Los Angeles Times, October 17, 2015. https://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-uc-spending-20151011-story.html.

[x] Public Policy Institute of California. “Higher Education in California: Institutional Costs.” Accessed December 8, 2020. https://www.ppic.org/publication/higher-education-in-california-institutional-costs/.

The election, ballots and outrage - 2020 edition

 Earlier this week I saw a post headline saying “Ballots found thrown outside and they all were for Trump” (the latter part in all caps, deemphasized by me here). So, I wanted to get to the real facts here as the link to the supposed official statement in the article, from a less than reputable outlet, didn’t work.  But I went ahead and went to the US Attorney Middle Penn District site, and found the real release, which provides better details and debunks the “all were for Trump” moniker:  https://www.justice.gov/usao-mdpa/pr/letter-luzerne-county-bureau-elections.

I have seen, and I am certain I will see and hear and so forth, numerous articles and reports of issues with mail, or ballot processing, or what not over the coming weeks and months as it relates to the election that is underway (another this morning from Wisconsin).  And with the president of the USA saying he “has to see” about whether there’ll be a peaceful transition of power after the election, as he believes there are “issues with the ballots,” there is certain to be outrage, anxiousness, and fear mongering to ensue.  So I want to post here something to set things straight, in context and in respect to the realities.  Succinctly, save your outrage folks about fraud and irregularities, because you really need to get a grip and we need to get our head around what is and is not happening.

Here’s my point, first, no one claimed anyone was lily white innocent of voter tampering or of making a mistake or of committing fraud.  No one is be-knighted a saint.  Let me state what is a clairvoyant fact:  humans, by definition, are not perfect.  This is why election boards have at least two parties as observers to keep each other honest.  Fraud and mistakes and procedural errors happen, there’s no question of that reality.  Whether any of this, however, is a significant problem, is what matters.

So second, the fact that this case was caught (or as you’ll read in many present and future cases, it was caught) as in nearly every case, and addressed promptly (within the week, here, often within the day), demonstrates that there is not a significant problem when it comes to our election, because, you just can’t get away with it over 99% of the time.  Is it bad that 6 ballots (in this particular case in Penn.) are not going to be counted?  Yes, our goal is that every vote counts.  Is it so bad that the election (or any election) will turn on it?  That is highly, highly, doubtful.  And if these do become the 6 critical votes, then there are remedies to resolve the issue that are proven, fair, and effective.  Is this a sign of widespread systematic fraud?  Most likely not.  More importantly, is it widespread systematic fraud that will be effective or have a significant effect on the outcome of the election?  Most certainly not.  Because it is almost always caught and it almost always is resolved to address the core issues of ensuring votes count and the votes cast are legitimate.

Further, the only way fraud could potentially work is if:

a) there was enough fraudulent ballots to have a significant effect on the race, 

b) the candidate actually won the race, and 

c) it wasn’t caught in any way (whether legally or through investigative journalism or an audit or through the many other means that it is likely to be).  

The level of effort required would be pretty unparalleled at this point, but is it possible?  Yes, it is.  But it would have to be coordinated, I don’t see how it couldn’t be, and I’d say it’d probably be harder than just running a campaign in the first place.  The moment there would be a whiff of any fraud at play, however, the game would be up and it would be roundly resolved, not in the favor of the cabal who attempted it.  It’s just not worth it and it’s just not likely, especially at the national (too many wrinkles) or local level (too expensive and too known).  Where there’s been more marked cases has been for state offices, and NY has been a poster child for this in the past (even up through the 1980s), but so has the southeastern US and other places.  It’s a dying art, and that is why it’s probably getting so much attention (aside from 45’s false hyperbole and cult following), in that its rare enough to make you think it’s not possible or worth trying, yet cases persist, even as they are almost always caught.

So, please, you and others who are outraged, nervous, or plain unhinged, keep posting about cases where folks, left, right and center, try voter fraud, have errors, make mistakes, and so forth, where they are caught and the election is proven to be well secured.  There will be many, this isn’t really new.  All it does is show that the problem isn’t with the ballots or the system for absentee/mail in voting, because it corrects itself amazingly well, especially with the heightened awareness you and yours are putting on it (hence why it seems that there is “so much more of it”, yet it’s just a symptom of the fact that we can get information (good or bad) faster and with more volume than ever before).  What is proven here, and in the numerous posts and articles and reports to come, is people take voting seriously and holding people to account; that isn’t a problem, that is a very good thing.  There’s not a “problem with the ballots”.  Quite the contrary.  The focus is on them and it will be watched ever more carefully, making sure we have a free and fair election, to the best of our human capacities, imperfect as they are.  To that end, hold your outrage for how people, who are entrusted with offices of public trust, behave when they receive the results.  Let us pray they act in accordance with our highest principles not our lowest, carnal responses, and we make no excuse or quarter for the latter.

Proposed Amendment to the Constitution - Congressional Districting

I’ve talked about it several times, but it’s time I finally get a version written so that folks can refer back to it.  I’ll provide commentary and support for the following at a later point.

Proposed Amendment to the Constitution - Congressional Districting

Section 1.  

The geographic districts from which Representatives are to be drawn from within each of the several States shall be determined by the legislatures thereof, and must demonstrate a good faith effort to provide substantially equal representation among the various districts for Representatives within that State, except as otherwise provided in this article or the Constitution.

Section 2.

The geographic boundaries of the district for any Representative shall be aligned with the boundaries of the immediate contiguous sub-jurisdictions of the State in which the district lies, either individually or in combination, such that no district for a Representative results in a division of an immediate contiguous sub-jurisdiction of the State, excepting that if a sufficient proportion of the population of said sub-jurisdiction is sufficient to warrant one or more Representatives on its own in order to provide substantially equal representation among the various districts for Representatives within that State.  A contiguous sub-jurisdiction having such ample population, in relation to the other districts for Representatives for that State, that multiple Representatives are warranted, may then be divided in such a manner as the State legislature of the State in which the district lies may direct.  Under no circumstances may a district for Representatives be comprised of a portion of one immediate contiguous sub-jurisdiction of a State in combination with another whole or portion of another immediate contiguous sub-jurisdiction of that State.

Section 3

No State may modify or amend the geographic boundaries of it’s immediate contiguous sub-jurisdictions without approval of Congress.  Congress shall determine the whole number of Representatives to to be apportioned among the several States by a 2/3 majority of both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Section 4

The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

“Believe in the Bible” and how that is not Christian

 

Amidst COVID 19, there are still times that we have the opportunity to witness to the reality we have been shown in Christ Jesus.  Of late I have been asked too many times, “do you believe in the Bible?”  Such a question is rife with problems, and it is high time I make a confessional statement to this question.

Let me start with that I don’t believe in the Bible.  I believe in God revealed to us through the Holy Spirit shown in Christ Jesus.  The Bible is the scripture through which we get a glimpse at the totality of the living God who can never be incarcerated within the bounds of black and white texts, even those that were penned, redacted, edited, and recalled by those who were chosen to have the Holy Scriptures revealed to: prophets, servants, and evangelists.  I read those scriptures often and with the greatest respect, can quote them in numerous places, but also understand their context, historical connections, and their cultural applicability.  Which is why I reject the idea that any one political party or another is for or against God’s will.  In Matthew’s gospel, Christ in speaking to the disciples, made it clear to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s”.  This was not just about taxes, it was about what God’s business is in and with the world, and about His Kingdom.  His Kingdom doesn’t tread in petty politics, but rises above.  He didn’t endorse the Romans over the Jews or say the Sadducees were any better than the Pharisees.  Therefore no political party is going to ever be God’s party over another, because, as I preached a couple weeks ago, God doesn’t get on our side, we are to get on God’s side.  We are all rank with sin (“all sin and fall short of the glory of God”), but Christ made it clear that “woe to those that carry these little ones into their sin”.  Be careful, therefore, that you are not following the false gods of wealth and power and personality, and being lead astray.

Succinctly, the Bible is not God.  Nor also is it all of God’s word; Christ is the Word.  Christians don’t “believe in” the Bible, they “believe in” God.  We believe what is revealed about God in the Bible is true (in other words we believe the Bible is true), but we don’t “believe in” a book.  As Luther said, the Bible is the manger in which we find Christ, but it is not Christ Himself.  We are warned in scripture to not worship/believe in "the Scripture", but worship/believe in its ultimate author.  That was Christ’s specific criticism of the Pharisees. They, the Pharisees, believed in the law and worshiped the law forgetting that it wasn’t the law/what is written that saves, but Jehovah.  I read scripture diligently and believe in the Word, but don’t make the mistake of making an idol out of scripture, which is what “believing in the Bible” can lead to.  I know many use “believing in the Bible” as short hand for “I believe that the witness of scripture is true about God and his relationship with all creation.”  I too. Often, however, it goes further to become worship of the holy writ itself, hence my very careful assertion and avoiding the euphemism.  I absolutely believe in God’s Word, but I also know that the Bible isn’t all of it and that it’s scribes were mere humans that were no more or less saints and sinners as the rest of us, trying to describe the Almighty in their own poor feeble way.  We just know that the Bible is the most true and most reliable view we have of God; it is our norm for faith.  God isn’t the Bible, however, he is much, much, much bigger and greater and powerful than can ever be put into all of the pages ever written.

Thus in conclusion, it is never ever enough to “believe in the Bible” as that is fleeting and much short of the glory of Christ on the cross.  Rather we are to believe in God, Jehovah, YHWH, the very creator of all that is and will be.  “Believing in the Bible” is a very weak substitute for what we are called to witness to.  As such, don’t “believe in the Bible” I implore you; rather believe in Christ and him crucified, raised from the dead, and ascended to heaven.  Amen.

 

When the Going gets Tough (in education), the Tough (educators) get Going?

When the Going gets Tough (in education), the Tough (educators) Get Going?

I’ll admit it, I live in academia.  My full time job is to educate the engineers of tomorrow.  I really like this job, and I think I do it well (although, I will be candid, I continue to be amazed at many of my colleagues who are better than I).  This said, after 5 years in academia full time, I still don’t fully fit in, and probably never will.  There are things like the constant need to relate to academic year vice summer in discussions around salary and research grants or the idea that you give someone up to 6 years to prove themselves, investing millions into them, and then you summarily fire them when they don’t get tenure (instead of converting them over to teaching faculty; recognizing that research isn’t the end-all, be-all for what makes a good educator at post-secondary institutions).  The whole business model and metrics around academic research continues to drive me nuts (like it just doesn’t make sense to me that you count success as high research expenditures, vice any kind of measurement of research outcomes; and to me those outcomes don’t have to always be monetary returns, but why isn’t that a part of the picture).  I also get driven nuts over how many of us live in a bit of la la land when it comes to entitlement, especially as it has come into stark relief amidst planning for return to classes this fall.

 

Now, let me be clear, we have to take COVID-19 seriously and we have to make preparations.  We have to account for individual risk factors and do what we can to mitigate those enhanced risks that exist over the pre-COVID “normal” levels of risk in everyday life.  I am not talking about that.  What I am talking about, however, is how quickly, when we look to put mitigation measures in place, words like “untenable” or “unrealistic” come out, in response to the inconveniences that come with them.  There are things that are indeed untenable, unrealistic, and so forth (for instance the ability to control the behavior of collegiate students at 2 am on Sunday morning of any given weekend such that a surge spread of COVID might be controlled, not likely), but the reactions actually aren’t to those things.  The reactions are too often in response to what amounts to rather trivial inconveniences when you step back and look at them, thus making them poster children for ridicule.

 

Before I cite some examples of this, let me fully disclose my role in our (Clarkson University’s) fall semester in-person teaching planning.[i]  Given my background in college and university facilities,[ii] and that the Director of Facilities and Services parted company early in the outset of the effects of the COVID outbreak at Clarkson, I have voluntarily stepped in to help the facilities response team in several aspects of the plan.  Namely I have been figuring out the occupancy limits in campus buildings, first as it relates to code occupancy, then as is relates to the state guidelines for social distancing.  I also have a team of students, working with a colleague of mine, that are doing socially distanced classroom layouts for both fixed seat classrooms as well as temporary classrooms, in places like the campus field house, as well as determining campus path routing to minimize the chance of spread during pedestrian movements on campus, inside our interlinked academic core.  So on top of my other roles, I have stepped in to help where my expertise can be of some hoped for value and been working in concert with many team members to do as best we can within the guidance provided.

 

So that being disclosed, let me cite some examples of what I am talking about as it relates to the level of privilege in academia in the midst of our ongoing response.  This first example comes from an email I received about the draft plan for one-way hallways in a major academic building on campus.  The author writes, “One way traffic makes sense in main circulating corridors.  However, on branch hallways, it results in some flow patterns that aren't tenable.  In XX building, the faculty office halls require faculty to go out into a stairwell, go downstairs and outside, then come back in the front entrance.  Even if the stairs could be two-way, it would mean going up or down stairs every time a faculty member needs to get somewhere.”  “Two principles have to be that people who need to use elevators can access them without stairs, and outdoor walking is minimized (as much as I prefer outdoor walking!).”

 

So let’s break this down, because you have to walk outside or being required to use a stairwell for able bodied persons (the plan has a blanket exemption for traffic plans for all those that have a mobility impairment), the plan is not “tenable”?  Further, while I am getting numerous questions about the adequacy of fresh air ventilation generally in buildings, the rubric should be that we give preference for indoor mobility over outdoor?  The email brought up good points that allowed us to make some better modifications to the traffic flow for this building, but as I also said in my reply, “what is tenable vice desirable, from an objective point of view, are perhaps different.”  As someone who literally slept under a vehicle for 2 months in Baghdad in the summer of 2003, I am sorry, but really?  The imposition of you, an able-bodied person, having to alter your route and being inconvenienced with having to go up or down a flight of stairs or routing outside for less than a minute or two (even if it’s raining, snowing or sleeting), is really a fairly small sacrifice in the big picture.

 

The second example I will cite is about a classroom set-up situation.  It comes from a fellow faulty member that has been vociferous in their concerns about face-to-face instruction in the fall, especially as it relates to ventilation, contact, and so forth.  This person contacted me about a particular classroom set-up.  My colleague writes, “I am surprised  that there are three seats in a row at one table, but what really horrifies me is that there is one seat right on the first seat at the table before the podium.  That forces me to be behind the monitor for 90 mins, which is unrealistic.”  So to break this down, what is really “horrific” is that the faculty member will have to stand in a particular location during their lectures for an hour an half class in order to maintain social distancing.  Not to be too flippant, but apparently students have now become the enemy?  Their conclusion was that the occupancy for the room was too high, and should be lowered.[iii]  So, in essence, I don’t want to have to modify my delivery to be static, so we need to change the room to accommodate me.

 

I have cited these two examples because they really get at the point I am trying to make.  Look, all of this sucks.  It really does.  I agree we should have made a much more concerted evaluation of whether we should have even tried in-person instruction in the fall, with all of its economic, social, and reputational aspects.  That said, candidly, I think I would have probably come up on the side of “giving it a try” for in-person education this fall.[iv]  Without question one of the things I learned, and learned well, from my service in the US Army, is that when you are in the “suck” you need to make the best of it.  Wallowing and complaining about the fact that things suck, doesn’t help you get out of it; rather it makes it “suck” more.  Instead, get over yourself, stop being selfish, and figure out how to mitigate the worst of it driving yourself out of it as fast as possible.  Afterwards, sure, figure out how not to get stuck in the same “suck” again, but don’t fixate on it when you are in the midst of it.[v]  COVID-19 sucks; teaching in-person in the midst of this pandemic has up-ticked the risk for sure.  But we have to step back a bit and get a grip, this isn’t the black plague nor is it going to be if we stay level headed.

 

Folks, let’s get real.  Is having to walk another 300 yards before or after going to the bathroom really make life unbearable?  Is it really that bad that you will have to modify your pedagogical approach for the coming semester to give the most students the best chance to learn?  What we need to get past, as academics, is that we are not the privileged children we think we are.  Look Socrates went to trial and was put to death.  There has been and always will be risk to our profession; one we need to accept, even, especially, when we are called to be inconvenienced.  This fall, we need to expect and live into the undesirable (in all its forms, including online education and more), it’ll make us better for it.  And if you are so concerned, there are outs:  instruct 100% virtually or look to pre-record you lectures and “flip” the classroom so that your face to face engagement isn’t you talking at your students but you dialoging with them through such mediums as Zoom, discussion boards, or what not.  All of this is more work, but frankly, if we’ve been paying attention (and I have), this is what we have been warned we will need to adjust to sooner rather than later, not just as individual instructors but all of academia.  So, words of wisdom from a soldier, live into the “suck”, get past it, and in the end, you’ll be amazed at how much we benefit from it, both individually as well as collectively.

 

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[i] For more, see the university response website:  https://www.clarkson.edu/future-ready

[ii] Among those this:  https://www.appa.org/standards-codes-landing-page/informatics-work-group/

[iii] With its secondary and tertiary effects of needing to move the class to another room or similar, creating a domino effect.

[iv] A slight counterfactual, in so much as I am absent the full analysis, and believe data should drive decision making more than it does at the institution at the present time; we are too often relying in on an intuitive instead of a deliberate decision making process.

[v] And, as my good battle buddy friend Sam Chisolm says, there is no need to train at living in the “suck”.